1. Dermi Cool

Summer doesn’t start in India unless Kailash Kher’s voice on TV declares that it is “mausam thande Dermi Cool ka”. And the frigid touch of this fairy dust on your parched flesh is as close to the big O as one gets!

2. Desert Coolers

An important summer ritual for the middle class Indian family is the cleaning, assembly, and connection of this lifesaving machine at an optimal location in the house. No AC can match the earthy-scented, cool breeze, along with a fine spray of water, emerging from the desert cooler

3. Speaking of scents…

This is another speciality that hits the markets only during the summers. My heart goes out to the resourceful person who invented cooler perfumes because no matter how much your mother nags you, no way in hell are you cleaning out the cooler tank unless your phone or something drops into it!

4. Kulfi makers

For decades, this contraption has fooled bored children and housewives into thinking that they can make ice lollies at home. Even so, we still buy a new one every few years, hoping that 2,378th time just might be lucky, right?

6. Bottles

Rooh Afza is not the only new entrant to the refrigerator. Bottles- ranging from your tiny Frooti can to a ginormous 2L Mirinda canister- along with a set of proper fridge bottles to bring out before guests, have to be filled and refilled every few hours. And God save you from your mother’s wrath if you happened to leave a single bottle half empty!

7. Ice trays

If I asked you where the ice trays are kept in August, you couldn’t answer me to save your life. But during summers, their importance escalates and keeping them stocked at all times is a sacred duty, entrusted only to the most sincere child in the family.

8. Emergency Lamps

Summer means exams. Sadly, it also means loadshedding. And while we had torches and lights that could last for years together, since the “Chinese” took over our market, buying a couple of emergency lamps is almost a yearly ritual now.

9. Hand fans

Proper bamboo fans, newspapers, booklets, any and every flat surface that can oscillate in a sweeping movement (powered by the tiny arms of all the family’s children of course) is employed for those torturous nights when the electricity takes a vacation too!